Project Description

NORTHLANE

with ERRA, SWORN IN and EARLY LIFE

@ ENMORE THEATRE

(Live Review)

Reviewer – Aaron Christensen

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Western Sydney progressive metalcore giants, Northlane‘s Mesmer tour hit Sydney on October 27th, a hometown show for the band, bringing along US progressive metalcore 4-piece, ERRA, another US band, Sworn In, and local band Early Life. The former began the night, with a short, intense set, with pits opening right from the start. Next to take the stage were ERRA, and, with their mix of pop/punk style clean vocals of Jesse Cash and the harsher growl of J.T. Cavey. With circle pits raging throughout, it was time for NORTHLANE to hit the stage. Early Life, Sworn In, and ERRA all put in fantastic performances, particularly the vocalists and their unique vocal styles. For the entirety of the night the crowd were moshing as hard as they could for as long as they could, particularly when ERRA hit the stage. Towards the end of ERRA’s set, unclean vocalist Cavey called out one dickhead who was pushing people to the ground in the circle pit, who was promptly ejected by security.

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After what seemed like an eternity and with enough smoke to assume the venue was on fire, NORTHLANE emerged and immediately blasted into a new track, Colourwave before leading into Worldeater, a song from their second album Singularity. They then continued with the first song recorded with Marcus Bridge as vocalist, Rot. After, they played Heartmachine, a soft song by their standards, the band erupted into Dream Awake, one of their most explosive tracks (and for Northlane that’s saying something). By this time, the pits were well and truly open (and fucking huge), with multitudes of sweaty bodies colliding into one another.

Northlane then ran through Render and Citizen, two more tracks off Mesmer, before playing Dispossession, the only song of the night from the band’s first album Discoveries. With its instantly distinguishable opening, Dispossession made the crowd insane, the mosh doubling in size. They then continued with more tracks from Mesmer, Intuition and Solar, before playing their most well-known song Quantum Flux. The band finished the set with Obelisk and Weightless, both from their third album, Node. After a small break the band came back out for a one-song encore, Paragon, a song dedicated to ARCHITECTS‘ guitarist Tom Searle, who died in 2016.

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NORTHLANE are a band who have had a rather drastic change to their sound over the past few years, going from a progressive metalcore band with perfectly harnessed unclean vocals and technical guitar, to a more tamed and formulaic structure, with more emphasis on pop/punk style clean vocals and constrained guitars. Throughout the gig there were flawless clean vocals, powerful drumming, heavy bass drops and raucous guitaring, however, the unclean vocals were relatively weak, with the instruments drowning out the heavier tone of the growl or scream. Despite this, the chance to see NORTHLANE is something you should never pass up, they really are a metal band like no other.

AMNPLIFY – RL

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